December 16, 2005

Community intelligence

I've been thinking a lot on community intelligence and co-creation, and a number of stories have caught my eye recently:

A couple days ago, Reveries had a great article on the 3 stages of evolution in search.

"You can look at the evolution of search as a play in three acts," says
Jeff Weiner, Yahoo’s vp of search and marketing, as quoted by James
Fallows in The New York Times (11/6/05).

Act One is the
‘public’ web, where if different people type the same query they’ll get
the same results.

Act Two is searching for whatever you’ve
filed in your own hard drive.

Act Three is “social” or “community” searching,
where the results are improved based on the successes of other people’s
searches for the same information.

It's basically search + human intelligence. Cool stuff. Perhaps Yahoo will start giving Google a run for its money. Then this morning I came across an old but very interesting post on IFTF's Future Now blog that discusses

"whether peer-to-peer networks and other tools that
facilitate "peer production" (to use Benkler's term) could help create
a new role for amateurs as active contributors to science.

The great example is NASA Clickworkers (no longer active, but described in articles in American Scientist, Space.com, BBC Tech, and elsewhere)
a system that allowed volunteers to do routine analysis of Martian
landscapes. The results were pretty good, and as Benkler put it, showed
"how complex professional tasks that required budgeting the full time
salaries of a number of highly trained individuals can be reorganized
so as to be performed by tens of thousands of volunteers." (Benkler,
"Coase's Penguin," 16)"

Businesses of all sizes are beginning to apply the power of community intelligence. @Last Software, a new client of mine, has incredibly active forums
on their web site that enable users to showcase their designs using
@Last's 3D design software, solicit feedback, get tips and tricks from
other users, submit Ruby scripts for enhanced functionality, share
custom-designed components and more. This loyal community of 'volunteer
employees' adds value and reduces the workload for customer service and
product development. LegoFactory is another great exampleof community intelligence and co-creation that I've talked about before.

I think there's a certain amount of fear among executives about this
idea. I once recommended The Wisdom of Crowds to an investor client of
mine, and he had such a hard time with the core premise that he put
down the book in the second chapter. How could thousands or millions of
untrained people come up with a solution that's equal to (or better
than) the experts? But it happens every day. The most recent data
point is the finding that Wikipedia is as accurate as Encyclopedia Brittanica on science topics. (from CNN.com:)

Based on 42 articles reviewed by experts, the average scientific
entry in Wikipedia contained four errors or omissions, while Britannica
had three.

Of eight "serious errors" the reviewers found --
including misinterpretations of important concepts -- four came from
each source, the journal reported.

Unlike Britannica, which charges for its content and pays a staff of
experts to research and write its articles, Wikipedia gives away its
content for free and allows anyone -- amateur or professional, expert
or novice -- to submit and edit entries.

If millions of unpaid volunteers can create accurate content,
provide tech support, write programs that improve the value of a
product, enable cost-efficient scientific analysis and improve web
search... where does that leave companies? You might consider thinking
of your business as a facilitator instead of an all-knowing entity that
must retain control over every aspect of the business.

Comments

As a company, you have three choices:

1) Become a facilitator (or hub)
2) Do it better than everyone else (which could mean faster or with more style, depending on the need)
3) Do it differently from everyone else. (Which could incorporate #2.)

Couldn't agree more ... I'm in the "library business" and I'd like to see us focus on being the binding tissue that enables peer-to-peer sharing and indexing (there’s an ‘ole timey word) of locally relevant content ... what if ... instead of focusing our efforts on creating new library-specific tools, we focus on getting people to contribute ideas, questions, things that inspire others, and activities that result in community engagement. Training and encouraging folks to share content for the betterment of communities using existing (and relatively mature – it’s all relative!) technologies seems to me a great fit for our skills and positions in the community.

If we do that, we become the library for the next generation ... active ... involved ... distributed ... and conversant in the whats, whys, and hows of the whole information-to-knowledge-to-engagement thing

Jennifer, as usual another thought tugging post. I have a tendancy to agree with you here. The big exception however is in online content where free information seems to be a big draw for most web businesses. Few deliver with content of any value however, and in strategic terms miss the boat and long term success as always seems to elude them.Comunnity is something that has developed over the years in different places with success. The field of education is probably the largest and most active community from pre-school to the Halowed Ivy Covered Walls. Although not new to business the idea of co-operative interchange within departments, or even partnered busnesses, is taking form in a more proactive context as they move toward customer experience mnagement. Since corporate cultures are inherently resistant to cultural changes, even marketing, this will be somewhat slow. There is deffinately a fall over affect from the internet mentality into the product divulgent consumer comunity and if the marketers would align on this perhaps an additional push with a little pre-education the concept of cheaper lasting as long or the more expensive the item or service the better the return mentality will disapear. I doubt if it will go entirely away, but certainly enough to allow for new segmentations.

I guess I understand your point about how a community can threaten the business plan of a company looking for revenue in support or for content driven product (you mention Wikipedia vs. EB), but does this really threaten companies that supply software itself? Until there are firmer standards on code sharing, integration of those code components together, and large number of folks willing to supply their time and effort to creating a product for free rather than having free time (or a paying job), I think that Microsoft executives and stockholders can rest easy at night.

The other question, as I see it, is one of perception... there is a deeply entrenched perception in business (and in some sense the general public) that cost must equal substance. A company I've worked for, while supplying a great product, was constantly losing jobs to companies that provided inferior product at a higher cost. The feedback that we received, by following up with these potential clients, was that since the cost was lower in our bids that the there wasn't going to be as significant substance to the product we delivered. When we raised our prices, our workload increased.

In the consumer arena, I know numerous folks (not just the folks who think that “trendy” expensive labels or brands equal a billboard for their success) that the cheapest HDTV, or whatever new product they are looking for, will be as long lasting or functional as a higher priced product.

Until these biases are overcome, I feel that businesses that put forth a solid product for a fee in a market that may have some no cost (or very low cost) options, will still succeed.

Who knows, perhaps it will just take time for folks to realize there could really be such a thing as a "free lunch".